The City of Guelph is currently undergoing a lockout of the transit workers, rendering all buses in the Royal City semi-permanently stuck in park as the people that depend on the bus try desperately to get by without it.

The story is complicated for how sudden and bizarre all the developments have been. The City came out of nowhere last month and told the union that the first offer was the final offer, the union voted to reject the deal, the city said “lockout” and then an 11th hour deal was reached to keep buses running. One week later, the union rejects the new deal and the lockout’s back on. Late. On a Sunday night. When most of the people getting up early are asleep, blissfully unaware that their bus won’t be arriving to pick them up in the morning.

On the first day of the lockout, I ventured down to City Hall, where I knew that transit workers would be picketing, to get into the story and to get at the reasons behind lockout we’re not hearing in the City press releases.